Enter Satan
The Gospel of Luke turns the corner in Chapter 22. Instead of Judas being annoyed or disturbed about Jesus’ behavior—as in John—he is suddenly possessed.
When I was a student at an Episcopal girls’ school, there was a column in the student newspaper entitled, “The Devil Made Me Do It.” For this middle schooler, the phrase had no prior meaning—I’m sure it was meant to be hilarious, some account of youthful antics written by a popular upper school girl—which left me feeling vaguely distressed. What had a big girl done? And can the devil really be responsible for our mistakes? In the household where I was raised, you didn’t blame anyone else if you got in trouble. In fact, I remember getting the blame even for things I hadn’t done often enough that I began wondering if I had done the things for which other kids at school got in trouble.
If only I had been leaning on Luke’s account of Holy Week, I might have felt less perpetually guilty.
By means of an inverted Deus Ex Machina, the Gospel of Luke turns the corner in Chapter 22. We don’t hear about Judas being annoyed or disturbed over Jesus’ behavior, as we would in John. Instead he is suddenly possessed and the story moves forward as if inevitable.
